


Team Evil (Plus Sakura)

by readythefanons



Category: Fire Emblem Heroes, Fire Emblem Series
Genre: Gen, would have been E for everyone except that somebody has a potty mouth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-05
Updated: 2019-02-05
Packaged: 2019-10-22 17:32:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17666993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/readythefanons/pseuds/readythefanons
Summary: Team Evil (Plus Sakura) was one of Kiran’s stranger ideas. Kiran couldn’t just let Hardin, Grim-Robin, and Empty-Takumi be out in the world doing their own thing--they needed a chaperone.





	Team Evil (Plus Sakura)

“I’ll kill Kiran for you,” Hinoka promised. “You don’t have to do this. I’ll just kill Kiran, and everyone will understand, and it’ll be fine.” Sakura sighed and nudged her sister to the side. Hinoka was sitting on Sakura’s bed, and while her company would normally be welcome, Sakura was trying to pack.

“Don’t kill Kiran,” she said firmly. “It’s just a test run. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

“Sakura,” Hinoka said seriously. “It’s insane. No one would blame you if you turned the assignment down.” Sakura looked down at the jacket she was folding. It was a mediumweight garment embroidered with her namesake. The pink blossoms cascaded down the sleeves and jacket front, forming a carpet of petals along the lower hems. It might protect her from a mild chill, but it wouldn’t do anything against a lance, fell magic, or enchanted arrows. Come to that, it wouldn’t do much against the _enemy’s_ weapons either. But it was comfortable and dear. She tucked it into her bag. 

“Kiran has a plan,” Sakura said. 

“Kiran has foaming mouth disease,” Hinoka muttered. She looked at her little sister and sighed, recognizing the set of her chin. She would not be turned aside. “Fine. I love you, stupid.” 

“I love you, too.” 

 

Sakura was a young woman with a quiet voice, an occasional stutter, and pink hair. When faced with unfamiliar situations, she preferred to fall back on politeness. Often people looked at these traits and decided she was naïve, silly, or even foolish. Their loss. 

That being said, as she stood waiting in the courtyard for the rest of her team to assemble, she was feeling more than a little stupid. She _could_ have turned the assignment down, just like Hinoka (and Subaki, and Hana, and seemingly every random person who had heard the rumors) had suggested. Perversely, every time someone tried to dissuade her, it just made her more determined. She’d entertained the notion that she was just going through a long-delayed rebellious period, but that wasn’t exactly it. With the exception of her close friends, every person who had expressed concern for her wellbeing had done so with a certain _look_ in their eyes. That look had said, ‘Those men are going to eat her alive.’ That was enough to make Sakura annoyed, but when she weighed that look against Kiran’s quiet voice telling her that he was sure she was the best person for the job—it made Sakura’s blood boil, just a bit. And here she was.

She sighed and considered sitting on her bag. There wasn’t anything delicate in there, but she wasn’t sure what she would do with her staff if she sat down. She could lean it against the wall, or maybe she should hold it in her lap…?

“The early worm gets the worm, I suppose,” a voice drawled. Sakura stiffened but didn’t stand. Grimma-slash-Robin slunk out of the shadows, moving like a creature on the hunt. 

“G-Good morning, Robin,” she greeted, cursing the nerves that brought out her stutter and pushed her voice into a higher octave. The possessed tactician sneered at her, dropping his own small bag next to hers. It landed with a heavy sound that Sakura decided not to wonder about. 

“Where is the rest of our little band?” he asked. Sakura was about to ask how she was supposed to know a thing like that but was saved (?) from having to speak by the arrival of the empty shell of her brother. 

“Good morning, Takumi,” she greeted. Her feelings towards the empty thing with her brother’s face were an uncomfortable mess of revulsion, sadness, and anger, all of it underwritten by love for the brother with whom she grew up. “It looks like a nice morning for travel.”

Her own brother might have looked up at the sky or rolled his eyes at her inane observation. This version of him merely looked at her with dead eyes. 

“ _Kill…_ ” he hissed. Grim-Robin leaned closer, moving with a sinuous grace absent in the other versions of Robin that Sakura knew. 

“N-not yet, Takumi,” Sakura said firmly. Grim-Robin snorted. She ignored him. “You’re not allowed to kill anyone until we arrive at our assigned location.” Empty-Takumi stared at her blankly but left his arrows in their quiver. 

“Not until we… arrive,” he repeated. 

“That’s right,” Sakura said helplessly. She peered at him with a modicum of despair. He didn’t seem to have anything with him except his bow, quiver, and the clothes he was wearing. Of course he didn’t. He probably wasn’t even aware of anything that didn’t have to do with killing, she thought and then immediately felt bad for thinking. Grim-Robin’s body was shaking, but a glance at him revealed that he was shaking with laughter. That seemed about right, too. Sakura sighed and stood, hefting her bag onto her shoulder. “When Hardin arrives, we can go,” she said firmly to no-one. Grim-Robin waved a hand at her, still laughing silently, and Empty-Takumi just stared blankly. 

Go Team Evil (Plus Sakura). 

 

Team Evil (Plus Sakura) was one of Kiran’s stranger ideas. As far as Sakura could figure it, Kiran couldn’t just let Hardin, Grim-Robin, and Empty-Takumi be out in the world doing their own thing (or working with the Order’s enemies). But adding any of them to the regular teams was a problem. No one from Ylisse could even stand to be in the same room as Grim-Robin, and there were similar problems for people from Hardin and Empty-Takumi’s respective worlds. Takumi-Takumi looked like he was going to throw up the first time he met Empty-Takumi, and Sakura couldn’t blame him. Kiran preferred the teams of the Order to include people from different worlds—something about having a breadth of knowledge immediately available—and there had been no success adding any of them individually to any of the loose, pre-existing teams. 

But the members of Team Evil seemed to get along with each other well enough—or rather, they didn’t seem to have any overt hostility towards each other. But Kiran couldn’t exactly just throw a bunch of evil people together on a team without some kind of chaperone. Kiran had started out trying to round out Team Evil with a non-evil, forceful team member. That had ended in figurative tears, so it was time to try a different approach. 

Team Evil (Plus Sakura) had a weird synergy. On the battlefield, they terrifying. It wasn’t just that they were brutal—although they were. It was that they were utterly _crazy._ Every man of them was completely off his rocker, but in a different way. Empty-Takumi only ever seemed to tune into the world when he was looking at it down the shaft of an arrow. Grim-Robin was a whirlwind of fell magic and crooning about power. Hardin was a juggernaut. But somehow, despite their palpable insanity, they were efficient. Sakura had been on missions with the Order before, and they usually lasted longer because her teammates were worried about, oh, limiting damage and protecting each other. Silly things like that. 

Their approach to teamwork was… unusual. Possibly what surprised Sakura most was that it existed in any form whatsoever. On other teams, the members worked together to ensure that everyone got to play a role and nobody was asked to do too much. On Team Evil (Plus Sakura) it was a kind of first-one-in-gets-the-most-heads system. Yet from one battle to the next, there was something almost like sharing. If Hardin slaughtered every single enemy in one fight, it was more than likely that Grim-Robin or Empty-Takumi would pick up the kills in the next fight. The only one who consistently saw action from battle to battle was, ironically, Sakura. She spent every fight in second position, running desperately after whoever was taking point so she could heal them enough to get them through the battle. 

Immediately after a battle, the most useful person on Team Evil (Plus Sakura) was Sakura, obviously. (Actually, she was probably the most useful person on Team Evil, full stop. But that wasn’t the point.) The second-most useful person after battles was Empty-Takumi. It was probably because he could be relied upon to follow orders, especially when he had gotten to shoot someone recently. (Sakura was aware of how bad that sounded, but there it was.) Grim-Robin and Hardin had a tendency to linger on the battlefield (for what reason, Sakura avoided learning). Takumi could be relied upon to help Sakura scout the surrounding area and administer a mercy stroke if need be. He was also the least likely to make Sakura feel judged if she had to find a nice quiet place to throw up. 

And so Team Evil (Plus Sakura) had a pretty successful first assignment, sweeping through the forests to the east with a surprisingly controlled amount of chaos and bloodshed.

 

It wasn’t until their second assignment, a series of skirmishes in the southern plains, that Sakura actually got hit. It was just an arrow, and it had been meant for Hardin. The enemy archer missed, is all, and grazed Sakura. 

Sakura’s first impression was, obviously, pain, followed by surprise. She had kind of forgotten that injury was something that didn’t just happen to other people. That was a stupid pattern of thought to fall into when your job was to follow your evil teammates into battle. She tightened her grip on her staff and focused on Grim-Robin, who was taking point today. Her plan was to keep him upright and murdering people and worry about her own injury later. 

She was further surprised by the enraged shouts of her teammates. Grim-Robin _incinerated_ the archer he’d been toying with. Hardin ran (and Hardin never ran) across the battlefield and brought down a swordsman with his massive lance (the reason Hardin never ran). Takumi growled and brought down not one but two Pegasus-mounted lancers. In a handful of busy seconds, the battlefield was empty save for Team Evil (Plus Sakura) and some very, very dead people. Sakura stared. 

“Blood,” Empty-Takumi grunted, suddenly standing next to Sakura and examining her wound. With one hand on her shoulder and the other on her elbow, he brought the injury closer to his face. 

“Stop that,” Sakura said automatically, smacking him on the head with her free arm. He retreated, blinking at her. She examined the graze. It hurt, but it didn’t look bad. 

“Allow me,” Grim-Robin said, insinuating himself into her space. He was reaching a hand out to--something, probably touch the injury like an infection-spreading mook. 

“Not you, either,” Sakura said, slapping his hand away. It was the nature of her power that it was easier to heal others than herself, but all she needed was her kit of traditional medicines and it would be fine. As long as no one touched the stupid injury with their disgusting murder hands. 

“What do you need?” Hardin asked, still breathing heavily from his sprint earlier. He’d just arrived. 

“Nothing, just my healer’s kit,” Sakura said, aggrieved. 

“Something, then, rather than nothing,” Grim-Robin corrected. Sakura rolled her eyes at him. If someone had told her a month ago she would be smacking her teammates and making rude faces at them, she wouldn’t have believed a word of it. 

“Takumi can carry my staff,” she said. Empty-Takumi stepped forward, accepting it from her. Since Sakura wasn’t a total moron, she did have a small first-aid kit with her. She allowed Hardin to help her apply a bandage, and the four of them walked back to their campsite. Her teammates stuck a little closer to her than usual, Hardin flanking her on her injured side, Takumi on the other, and Grim-Robin taking point. Normally Team Evil indulged in what passed for chatter when they left a battlefield, talking at cross purposes about power, killing, and crushing their enemies underfoot. Today they were oddly silent. 

Sakura gave them all the side eye when they stayed at her side when they reached their campsite. 

“Dinner isn’t going to make itself,” she reminded them. 

“It can wait,” Hardin rumbled. He planted himself outside her tent. Sakura glanced at her other teammates. Grim-Robin usually disappeared to do who-knew-what after a battle, but today he seemed inclined to pace around their campsite like an irritated tiger. Empty-Takumi stood next to Sakura’s tent, still holding her staff. She sighed and bent to crawl into her tent. Empty-Takumi surprised her by putting an arm out to stop her. He passed her staff back to her, then crawled into her tent himself. He emerged a moment later with her medicine kit. 

“…Thank you,” Sakura said. She passed him her staff again and sat herself by their firepit. Empty-Takumi hovered nearby, passing her things from her kit when she asked for them. Hardin loomed behind them, and Grim-Robin continued to pace. When she finished patching up her graze, she looked at her teammates expectantly. “Dinner?” she asked. Takumi passed back her staff and medicine kit before taking his bow and heading away from camp. He would find meat, probably rabbit or some sort of quail. Grim-Robin snorted and rolled his eyes before he vanished to do who-knew-what. Hardin fetched some buckets and started walking in the direction of a river they’d scouted earlier. Before he left he campsite, he turned back to face her.

“Whatever you think of us, you are part of this team,” he rumbled. “Do not be so careless again.”  
Sakura was thoughtful as she put away her medicines and got out their cooking things.

 

Kiran sent Team Evil (Plus Sakura) on a lot of missions practically back-to-back. Thus, Sakura didn’t get to spend much time at the Order’s castle until several months after the team was assembled. 

Coming back to the castle was different. Before she had left, people had rarely looked at her and seldom with recognition. Now, though, she _felt_ the curiosity of her fellow Order members. 

“You’re really okay?” Takumi (real Takumi) asked intently, staring at her like he could check for injuries through all the material she wore. She shook her head and turned her back to him, putting her clothes away in their proper places.

“Yes,” she repeated. Again. “I’m fine. They didn’t hurt me, they didn’t threaten me, they didn’t even scare me after I got used to them.”

“Get _used_ to them? How did you get used to them? They’re evil!” Takumi said. Sakura sighed sharply but didn’t turn around.

“They fight for our side,” was all she said. “Kiran trusts them.”

“Kiran trusts _you,_ and don’t think I haven’t been reading him the Riot Act since I found out what he’d done,” Takumi said. Sakura turned around. Takumi had flopped onto her bed and was staring at the ceiling. “Why’d you even take the assignment?” Sakura blinked. 

“A couple of reasons,” she finally said. “Some of them easier to understand than others, I suppose.” 

Takumi sat up and looked at her, really looked at her. Sakura held still. She’d learned the art of holding still long before being summoned to this world, but she hadn’t really perfected the art until recently. More important than keeping her body still was keeping her heart calm. Takumi continued to study her. 

“Well maybe your brother can learn to understand one or two,” he said, patting the space beside him. Sakura took the invitation and next to him. When they were sitting side-by-side, it was harder to look at each other, but that wasn’t always a bad thing.

“Do you think much about how we all got here?” she asked. Takumi shifted. 

“Multiverse,” he said shortly. She smiled. Takumi understood multiverse theory even less than she did, but he hated to admit when he didn’t know something. 

“Right,” she said instead. “So I might not really be the sister you remember, just like you might not be my brother. We might all have come from different universes, even though we remember each other.” 

“If I remember you, doesn’t that mean I knew you, and we came from the same place?” Takumi grumbled. Sakura shrugged.

“And there’s the possibility that for each one of us, there are sisters and brothers who are missing us and don’t know where we’ve gone.”

“Or a kingdom missing its heirs, I remember,” Takumi muttered resentfully. Sakura nodded, not surprised that Takumi had thought about that much, at least. 

“But there’s a good chance that there’s a hole somewhere where we were all supposed to be,” she said. “Or maybe not, it’s hard to say. Maybe no one even knows we’re gone.”

“How can they not miss us?” Takumi asked, now more disgruntled at the thought of not being missed than at the sadness their disappearance might be causing. 

“Something about self-healing timelines and a bunch of other stuff that sounds made up,” Sakura said. She waved a hand. “Doesn’t matter.”

“I think it matters.”

“Doesn’t matter right _now._ We’re talking about the formation of Team Evil, remember?”

“How can you fight with them when even you know they’re evil?” Takumi asked. Sakura slapped him lightly on the arm to shut him up. He did, which surprised her, and then she realized that she’d probably never smacked Takumi-Takumi before. 

“So even though you hate him, evil-you came from somewhere.” 

“He’s not me.” 

“Shut up,” Sakura said easily, again before she realized that this was uncharted territory for them. He did. “Evil-you came from somewhere, and that means that either he left behind his not-evil me, who is probably worried sick about him and what damage he might be doing—”

“—Thanks—”

“—or he left behind evil versions of his siblings, and they’re probably worried about him despite being evil.”

“You can’t know that. If they’re evil, why would they worry?”

“I think they would,” is as much of an explanation Sakura’s willing to go into now. “Trust me. Or else he killed them all—”

“—I’m gonna need a drink to get through this conversation—” 

“—and he was all alone. And then he got summoned here.”

“So you love me, and that’s why you joined the team?” Takumi asked. 

“Partly, and part of why I stay is for him,” Sakura said.

“But _I_ don’t want you to risk yourself by being on Team Evil,” Takumi said, aggrieved. “Me, the real me. Not evil, fake-me!”

“He’s not you,” Sakura snapped back. “You’re the one who keeps reminding everyone.” Takumi went quiet. “Seeing if I could do anything for him was part of why I was interested in giving it a try,” Sakura said quietly. “And knowing that I can is part of why I stick with it.” 

“He looks as dead-eyed and creepy as ever to me,” Takumi said. Sakura hit him on the arm again. 

“You’re wrong,” she said but didn’t elaborate. She didn’t know if Empty-Takumi was ever going to recover from what he was. The medicine woman in her thought he wouldn’t. But she was sure he had improved since he first arrived. He remembered to eat, and sometimes he brought her things without being asked. He still didn’t speak much, but he definitely followed what people around him were saying. There was someone in there, even if Takumi-Takumi didn’t recognize it. 

“Fine. What about the other ones? A conqueror and an evil dragon.”

Sakura shrugged. “They follow their orders. They don’t kill or maim anyone who isn’t trying to kill them.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“They haven’t done it since we started working together,” Sakura said. “They are creepy, especially when it comes to how they kill people, but you shoot people and Hinoka slashes them so they either bleed out or they die of a gut wound. The Robins fry people with lightning, and, believe me, you do not even want to know the technical details of what Tharja does.” She sighs. “I don’t know what the right thing to do with them is. Before they got here, they did things I can’t even wrap my mind around. Now that they’re here, they’re fighting on our side. Is it enough? I have no idea. I’m willing to follow Kiran’s orders if it means not having to think about it. I wouldn’t say they’re a necessary evil, but they can be useful.” 

“We could kill them,” Takumi whispered. Sakura leaned away from him so she could level him with a sardonic look.

“I’m pretty sure death doesn’t work the same way here as it does at home,” she said flatly. Takumi goggled at her. She shrugged. “Talk to some of the other staff wielders if you want. There’s some weird stuff that happens in this world.” Takumi looked rightly disturbed by that particular revelation. She sighed. “If your biggest objection is that they’re evil, you’re going to need to take it up with someone more important than me,” she said. “If you’re worried about my safety, then stop.” 

“I can’t just stop,” Takumi objected. “I’m your brother.”

“I spent three months with them and no one else. They haven’t hurt me, and they’re actually… kind of nice to me, in a weird way.”

It was Takumi’s turn to lean away from her so she could appreciate the full effect of his incredulous stare. 

“How?” he asked. 

She told him. 

 

“Takumi-nii,” Sakura called, knocking on his door. “I need to talk to you.” His door remained shut. She knocked harder. “Takumi. I know you’re in there.”

The door opened and Takumi peeked out of his room.

“Yes, my sweet sister?” he asked. Sakura crossed her arms and tapped one foot. It was stereotypical, but it worked on Takumi. He gulped. “Why don’t you come in?” She came in, fully intending to flop on his bed. She had to push his bow and quiver aside, as well as a plate empty except for crumbs. There really was something satisfying about flopping on someone else’s bed. 

“You’ll never guess what happened to me in the mess hall today,” she said. Without waiting for him to speak, she continued, “I bumped into Henry. Do you what he did? He apologized and got the hell out of my way.” She watched with amusement as Takumi struggled with his first reaction (chastising her for her language, of all things) and tried to focus on what she was saying. 

“…Okay?”

Sakura flopped on the bed so she could stare into her brother’s soul. 

“Why is Henry afraid of me?”

“He’s afraid of you?” Takumi said, scratching the side of his neck and fidgeting with some stuff on a dresser.

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure I saw the whites of his eyes.”

“He has those?”

“Again, kind of adding to my point. And then, to test the hypothesis, I went bumped into a bunch of people in the mess hall on my way out. Same reaction.” 

“You bumped into people to see if they were afraid of you?” Takumi asked, looking disturbed. Sakura waved a hand. Obviously she bumped into people to see if they were afraid of her. It was the easiest way to find out. 

“Yes, and at least half of them showed a fear-like reaction. What is going on?”

“Uh, okay, this is just conjecture, you understand…” Takumi began. Sakura gave voice to a groan from the depths of her soul. “But, uh, it’s possible that after our little chat, I needed someone to talk to…”

“So you went to Hinoka and kept it inside the family.”

“Uh, well not Hinoka, as such, but kind of inside the extended family…?” Sakura groaned again and rested an arm across her eyes.

“Leo.”

“Yeah,” Takumi admitted. “Leo. But in my defense, Hinoka was doing something.” 

“Also, you and Leo are weirdly attached at the hip.”

“You’re a member of Team Evil, I don’t think you get to criticize my choice in friends,” Takumi said with  
frustrating reasonableness. “And then it’s just possible that his brother drifted by, and then before I knew it…”

“So the whole castle is afraid of me because you gossiped with Leo,” Sakura said, unimpressed. 

“They’re maybe a bit afraid of you because you’re the darling of our most unhinged lunatics.” 

“I regret telling you anything,” Sakura announced. 

 

Sakura had been back at the castle for an entire, glorious, hot-water-savoring week when she realized that she had not seen any members of Team Evil since they got back. That was an unsettling thought—not because they were out of her eyesight and therefore she had no idea what they were getting up to, but because she didn’t know if anyone was going to remind Empty-Takumi to eat. 

Muttering unflattering things about herself, she stalked the halls in search of her wayward teammates. People got out of her way very rapidly. She had mixed feeling about that. 

She was thirty minutes into her search when she decided she was an idiot. She had no idea where any of her teammates roomed, and the castle was huge. The usual guidelines for deducing where a person would be quartered did not apply, since “put them next to people who know them” was a recipe for disaster. With an irritated huff, she spun on her heel and started stalking her way back down the hall. She would just have to find Kiran. 

She made it as far as the door to Kiran’s offices before she ran out of steam. She hesitated. She did not want to admit to their commander that she had lost the members of her team. It reflected poorly on her, that she would forget she was part of a team as soon as she was back in the castle. It also reflected poorly on their team as a whole, that they stopped being a cohesive unit as soon as they ran out of enemies to kill. She had turned around, resolved to find her teammates herself, when the door swung open anyway. 

“Sakura!” Kiran said, looking pleasantly surprised. “I was just going to look for you.”

“Kiran,” Sakura said politely. The summoner was holding some paper bags. She took one when it was proffered. The smell of hot, fried, and probably salty food wafted from it. 

“These are for your team,” Kiran said. “I thought it might be a fun treat.” Sakura peeked inside. Kiran often came to the castle with unusual foods. 

“Oh! This is one of your sand-witches, right?” she said, recognizing the form. There were two round pieces of bread with an oversized, flattened meatball and some vegetables between them. 

“Yeah, kind of,” Kiran said. 

“And what are these?” Sakura asked. There was a paper thing full of what proved to be fried potato spears. 

“Fries,” Kiran said. Sakura nodded with approval. Kiran’s food often had nonsensical names, like sand-witch or coal’s-law. 

“Can you share them with the rest of the team?” Kiran asked anxiously. “I’d bring them myself, but Fred wants to talk to me about misusing the portal gun.”

“And you don’t want to get caught with the evidence in your hands?” Sakura guessed. Kiran grinned. 

“Exactly!” Before Sakura knew it, she had an armful of paper bags and was watching the summoner disappear around a corner with a hurried, “Thanks, Sakura! I’d check the dungeons!” 

 

They were in the tower. Empty-Takumi was staring at people on the ground through the arrow slits. He had his bow and quiver, but he hadn’t drawn his bow. Sakura thought he looked rather bored and fretful, which could mean almost anything—maybe she was better at reading him, maybe he was more expressive, or maybe she just was projecting. Hardin was nearby, gazing into the distance as if following a battle only he could see. Grim-Robin was nearby, talking to himself about how the worms looked like ants from up here and contriving to look like his presence near the other two was sheer coincidence.

Sakura cleared her throat. Empty-Takumi, Hardin, and Grim-Robin turned to her. She smiled shyly and hefted the bags. The sun was bright and the day was warm.

“Anyone hungry?”

**Author's Note:**

> Sharing food is a universal sign of friendship, OK?  
> If you liked this (very weird and niche) story, please leave a <3! It was hella fun to write  
> Edited to tone down Sakura's potty mouth :) Don't want to shock Takumi too badly!


End file.
